


The Ballad of the Lincoln Café

by sheafrotherdon



Series: A Farm in Iowa 'Verse [30]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-31
Updated: 2008-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 22:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amid familial chaos of all kinds, John and Rodney realize something is missing . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ballad of the Lincoln Café

**Author's Note:**

> For [[everyone]](http://sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com/166981.html) who donated to Fire_fic for the production of this story – I only wish I could have finished it sooner for you all! Mad thanks to Yin_again for letting me pick her brain, to Girlnamedpixley for figuring out why and where I was stuck (and getting me unstuck!), and to Dogeared for her amazing beta skills once again.

  
  


It might have been nice, John thinks, pulling suitcases down out of the attic, to have thought ahead – to have taken a couple of weeks of plain old ordinary time for themselves before committing to a trip to Toronto. But thinking ahead is not exactly his family's forte (he almost loses his balance, booted foot sliding on a stray sock, renegade from the piles of laundry scattered across the landing), and he's not sure even he'd have heard sense in the suggestion if someone had made it when Caleb called with the news about nephew number two. He weaves between boxers and Pokemon underpants, almost pitches backwards when Finn barrels out of his room with four books clutched to his chest. "For my planes trip!" Finn says, hurrying toward the stairs. "Gonna read 'em on the planes!"

"Hey, leave them up here," John calls, settling the smaller rolling suitcase across the threshold into Finn's bedroom. He sighs when he sees the devastation inside – the soft toys, trucks, and maybe-clean clothes strewn across the bed and onto the floor. "We're packing up here!" he calls, leaning over the banister.

"Nope! Table! Needs table!" Finn says, thumping down the last few stairs. "Gonna make a _pile_!" he yells from the living room. "Daddy always makes a pile!"

It's true – Rodney's methodology of packing is to gather everything he might possibly need onto the bed, then whittle down his choices until the remaining muddle fits into a suitcase – but John's not anxious for his son to follow suit. "Yeah, well, Daddy's way of doing things is – "

"Canna have a big suitcase?" Finn asks as he runs full tilt up the stairs again. (The kid's not even winded, John notices, feeling something close to admiration, with a side of appalled.) "I wanna take BEAR!" And he barrels past John, heading for the approximately-life-sized (when compared to a three year old) grizzly bear that Ada found at a charity shop in Cedar Rapids and brought home for Finn's enjoyment.

"I think they've got plenty of bears in Toronto," John says, picking his way toward his own bedroom.

"John?" Rodney yells from the bottom of the stairs. "John, have you seen my page proofs?"

"Nope!"

"They were on the kitchen table!"

"So look on the kitchen table!" John yells back.

"I have! They're not there!"

John rolls his eyes, sets down the other suitcase, turns on his heel and stoops to pick up an armful of laundry that needs to be washed. "Can't help you!"

"Did you move them?"

"No! Why would I – "

"Move, Baffa!" Finn crows, dragging Grizzly by his ear, straight through the piles of sorted laundry, and bumping him down the stairs. "Is lunchtimes!"

"If I can't find them, I'm going to have to go to the lab!" Rodney calls, voice fading as he wanders off to god knows where.

John rolls his eyes. That's probably supposed to be some kind of threat, but it's not as though Rodney's doing much in the way of prepping for their trip anyway. At least if he's out of the house there'll be one less child for John to wrangle. "Okay!" John fishes a stray t-shirt out of the whites pile and starts downstairs, socks dangling between his fingers.

"Baffa, you moves slowly!" Finn says from the foot of the stairs – he's apparently already deposited Grizzly in the spot that makes sense to his childish brain, and he's anxious for the next trip to his room. "Move, move! Hurry!" There's the sound of tiny stomping footsteps, and John at least has that much of a warning before small hands push at his knees, shoving at him to get past and back upstairs.

"God, this is a madhouse," John mutters, dropping a sock, slipping on it a nanosecond later, and sliding down the last few steps on his ass. He sits at the foot of the stairs, blinking stupidly, looks up when Rodney rounds the corner from his office, newly-found page proofs in his hand.

"Don't go falling _down_ ," Rodney says incredulously, and maybe he means to sound concerned, but John still wonders how he's not supposed to punch him in the face.

"Here," he says, struggling to get up and dumping the laundry at Rodney's feet. "Your turn to wash," and he wanders off toward the kitchen to find some ibuprofen before his tailbone starts bitching at him too.

There are two days before they fly, and it's about seventeen too few by John's reckoning. He's already arranged for Ada's grandson to house-sit while they're gone, so at least they don't have to worry about boarding Burp, but there's the rocking chair to ship to Canada, and gifts to buy for the new baby, the baby's mom, and – crucially – the baby's siblings so that all hell doesn't break loose of the 'you don't love me as much as the baby!' type. John shakes two ibuprofen loose from the bottle they keep on the pantry's top shelf and swallows them as he hears Rodney shuffle past with laundry in his arms. Laundry. Maybe they should just buy all new clothes – could it really be any more of a hassle than washing what they have?

"Baffa?" Finn says, poking his head around the pantry door. "I's hungry and 'bout to starve to _death_."

"Death, huh?" John asks, sliding the pill bottle back where it belongs. "What kind of death? Gory death? Slow and painful death?"

"Gory," Finn says solemnly, backing out of the way to let John into the kitchen. "I prolly essplode ever'where."

"Blood and guts," John says, nodding sagely.

"Alllllll over th' walls."

"Can't have that. Want a grilled cheese?"

Finn looks at the ceiling while he considers this. "I think that'd be okay." He pats his belly and looks back at John. "Specially if it comes with ice cream."

John raises an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

"Ice creams have – have . . . " Finn frowns and chews on a finger. "Have _calsyums_. Is important! Laura told me 'bout it!"

"Milk has calcium too," John says, crossing to the fridge to pull out the cheese and the butter. "You could just have a big glass of milk with your grilled cheese and . . ."

"But milk is not ice cream," Finn says, as if John is perhaps the stupidest person he's met recently.

John snorts softly. "True enough."

They divide and conquer after lunch – after Rodney gets ketchup on his nose and John's forced to lick it off, partly because Rodney's stupidly attractive with food on his face, and partly because he knows it'll make Rodney rant about how he's a disgusting sort of person – Rodney taking Finn to the pharmacy, the toy store, and Target; John taking the rocking chair to the UPS store to be shipped. John gets home first, throws another load of clothes in the dryer and one more into the wash; lets Burp out to run madly over the pasture in pursuit of criminally interesting smells; finds the checkbook, pays some bills; calls the lumber yard to check on the wood he'd ordered for the Losey's cattle shed. He's making a start on the dishes by the time he hears Rodney's car pull up; the peace that rises up once the engine's cut rapidly disintegrates beneath the power of Finn's ceaseless babble. "You could carry something!" he hears Rodney yelp.

"I's very busy!" Finn calls, apparently heading off into the pasture, called by the lure of the dog. "Sticks!"

Rodney thumps up onto the porch, pulls at the screen door, elbows his way inside the kitchen. He dumps a pile of Target bags on the floor. "Hi," he says. "Our son's run off."

"Awesome," John says with a grin. "For good?"

"Quite possibly," Rodney nods. "Hold please," and he stomps out to the car again. When he comes back a second time it's with an armful of brochures that he dumps on the kitchen table, photocopied forms and stapled bundles of checklists sliding into a messy pile on the floor.

John raises an eyebrow. "And this is . . . ?"

"Oh, you know." Rodney's squinting out through the screen door at the darkening sky. "Surrogacy stuff. Stopped by my office to pick it up. Is the sky supposed to be purple?"

"Least it's not green," John offers, taking pains to avoid the mess on the floor – while it's not entirely rational to imagine it might bite him, he's not taking chances. "Surrogacy stuff?"

"Mmmm." Rodney closes the door, unzips his jacket. "Um – " He waves a hand. "Fertility program info from the hospital, various clinics, guidelines, legal checklists, prospectuses from surrogacy clearing houses – "

"Clearing houses?" John asks. "They call them clearing houses?"

"I don't know, does it matter?" Rodney asks, rubbing his hands through his hair.

"Just so long as no one shows up with a check and flowers," John mumbles as Finn rushes in from outside, almost toppling Rodney, who's standing perilously close to the door.

"Thirsty!" he grins, hugging Rodney's leg. "Hi Daddy."

Rodney eyes him suspiciously. "What did you do?"

"Nothin!"

Rodney narrows his eyes some more.

"Squished a beetle with my fingers!" Finn grins, holding up his hand to show the gooey guts of a once-living thing.

"Oh, gross," Rodney moans. "Did you wipe that on my . . . you _did_. You wiped that on my pants!"

Finn cackles wildly and runs into the living room, heading for the stairs. "I go wash my hands!" he shouts cheerfully.

"And I'll go change my pants," Rodney sighs. "Can you – " He gestures to the bags on the floor.

"Got it," John says, drying his hands.

"Thanks," Rodney offers. "Purple sky," he adds, apropos of nothing, pointing resolutely toward the window, then heads after his son, muttering things about bugs and pastures and the vagaries of weather in their strange and incomprehensible corner of the Midwest.

John unpacks the bags – puts away the chewing gum and lifesavers that are to stop their ears popping on the flight; leaves the new toothbrushes on the table; smiles over the soft green frog and receiving blanket Rodney picked out for Robbie, the lavender neck pillow that must be Jeannie's gift. There are gift cards for the other two kids, a bag of coffee beans for Caleb, toilet bowl cleaner, floss, and two coffee mugs marked down to half price. Once everything's stowed, sorted, or put aside to be packed, John stoops to pick up the mess of brochures on the floor – finds, predictably, that nothing bites, and that he can't help but start to look things over as he picks them up, pulling out a chair and shifting everything around so that he can see the array of choices he's been handed by his middle-aged astrophysicist partner-cum-stork. It's startling, John finds – downright unsettling to contemplate the sheer number of smiling faces and cherubic babies staring out at him from the pages of what amount to glossy magazines. He grabs a brochure at random – half hears Finn and Rodney start up a game of Let's Be Dinosaurs in the living room – stares at the pale green cover, at the photo of a family that reminds him more of a Sears catalog than any actual arrangement of father, mother, daughter, son. He flips through the contents, feels his guts cramp with every subsequent picture he sees of a straight, white family cooing over their newborn, and pitches the brochure into the trash just because he can. He finds two brochures that make specific mention of God as a member of their fertility team – pitches those – and one that he discards because the turquoise cover is nothing he wants to be associated with for the rest of his life. That leaves four possibilities – brochures as glossy as their counterparts, but at least everyone inside isn't white, and when he finds a picture of two women with a child he's so suddenly relieved he bangs the table with his fist, then laughs, sheepishly amused. He half wishes Rodney were with him, that they could read through this stuff together, but he can hear the game of Dinosaur raging next door, hear Finn's delighted squeals and Rodney's monstrous roaring. They've had precious little time of late to just enjoy those kind of moments, so he doesn't disturb them, flips open the catalog and starts to read. A long time passes before Rodney appears at the door.

"I am the great big monster T-Rexaddy," he says deadpan.

John looks up just as a flash of lightning turns the room violet-white and all the power dies. "Those are some damn impressive dino-powers," he observes, and gets up to find the candles.

~*~

It may be April – the storm outside testimony to the fact that it's spring – but the house is still cold without the benefit of a functioning heating system, and Rodney decides the only thing for it is to build an enormous blanket fort in the living room while John works out how to feed them all without opening the fridge more than once. A McKay fort, it turns out, is a complex creation – the couch and armchairs are all turned around, blankets hauled out of the linen closet and double tucked to keep out drafts, pillows collected from every bedroom (Finn's special task) and flashlights and books and board games hoarded for entertainment. There are extra sweatshirts and thicker pairs of socks and enough stuffed animals that they have three apiece should Finn decide to share. John passes Doritos and sandwiches and pudding cups in through the fleece portcullis, finds bottled water and beer in the pantry that'll cool down quick enough, and Rodney sacrifices his chocolate stash to the greater good. It's a little creepy, holed up together while rain lashes the house and thunder rolls constantly overhead, but Finn just claps his hands, declares everything "FUNNEST" and stuffs a handful of chips into his mouth as if the wind isn't howling certain destruction outside.

"Should we check the basement?" Rodney asks later, voice barely more than a whisper once Finn's sacked out between them, mouth bright orange from more Doritos than anyone should probably consume.

John groans in protest. "I don't wanna."

Rodney snorts. "I thought there was only one three-year-old in our house."

John yawns. "It'll just be flooded and wet and gross and I can't shower afterwards and it's cold."

Rodney hums companionably. "So we'll deal in the morning," he offers.

"Yeah," John nods. "There's a plan."

They lie together silently for a while, listening to the rain that slams against the windows, the wind that shrieks about the eaves. It's the first night in god knows how many, John realizes, that he and Rodney have been in bed together before midnight – and it's a bed that mostly consists of the living room floor, with their son jammed between them, his fist jammed happily into his eye.

"So were you. . ." Rodney shifts a little, stills again as Finn mumbles in his sleep. "Were you reading the brochures?"

"Looked at some of 'em." John thinks back to the photos he saw. "Threw some away."

"The ones from the Klan?"

"They were not from the Klan," John huffs.

"Well. You can hardly blame me for the conclusion – they seemed to want some god-fearing white babies."

"Maybe." John rubs his nose with the back of his hand. "There were some that looked good though. The blue one?"

"Hmmm," Rodney agrees. "We should probably start making some decisions."

"Like what?" John asks.

"Like . . . do we want to go with gestational surrogacy or traditional surrogacy?"

John blinks. "Isn't, you know, gestation kinda integral to this whole thing?"

"Right, sure, but that's – the first is where we use an egg from somewhere else and your sperm and mix them up – "

"You make it sound like cake batter."

" – and they're placed, separately or together, in a surrogate's . . . you know . . . womb – "

John valiantly doesn't snort at the way Rodney can barely say the word.

" – and the other is where we use the surrogate's eggs."

John thinks about this. "Well, where else would we get an egg but the surrogate?" he asks, struck by visions of the coolers at the local grocery store, stocked with the tiniest egg cartons known to man.

"You can pick them out of a book, find out the donor's height, eye color, hobbies, interests, IQ, that sort of thing."

John wrinkles his nose. "That's weird."

"People do it all the time."

"Okay, but – why wouldn't we use the surrogate's eggs?"

Rodney waves a hand in the darkness – a vague, swooping shape. "Because not all surrogates want a biological tie to the child, and not all parents want a biological tie to the surrogate and . . . lots of reasons. We just have to decide which _we_ want."

"Okay." John chews on his bottom lip. He's no idea what he wants. "And then what?"

"We fill out a lot of forms and get your sperm count checked."

John heaves a put upon sigh. "Here we go . . ."

"I'm not casting aspersions," Rodney says quickly. "We just want to know if your balls are doing their job before we send your boys off to the great unknown."

"My boys are fine," John says, and even to his own ears he sounds sulky.

"So it'll be no problem to have a professional say so, then, will it?" Rodney asks.

John squirms. " _You_ never had your sperm counted."

"Well, no, and look how well my method of bringing a child into the world worked out. One week's notice and an airplane ride from California laden down with fourteen bags, the contents of which were 100% incomprehensible to me."

John shifts onto his side and stares at Finn's head. "It worked out fine."

"Well – of _course_ it worked out fine, I just . . ." Rodney shifts and leans over Finn, kisses John firm and hard on his forehead. "Stop worrying."

"Kinda my default when it comes to, you know. Stuff I don't know crap about."

"So we'll learn about it," Rodney suggests. "And then you can quit worrying, right?"

They both fall silent for a moment.

"Okay, so that's not very likely for either of us, but I can be surprisingly and naively optimistic at times," Rodney says, and John snorts softly, finds Rodney's hand with his own, and closes his eyes.

~*~

The power comes back on mid-morning, and John girds his loins, crawls out of the blanket fort, straightens up with more difficulty than he'll ever admit to anyone else, and pokes his head out onto the porch. There are tree limbs down as far as the eye can see, but no gaping holes in the barn roof, and the chicken coop's standing steady. He heads down to the basement, thanks his stars that the water's already gone, sets the dehumidifier on high, and stands in the northwest corner to figure out where they should install a sump-pump if they want the house to keep on standing for another hundred years. Breakfast is toast and coffee and the radio broadcasting staticky news from around the neighborhood – Don Hackell's sheep took shelter under a tree that got hit by lightning, for instance, and every last one is dead.

"Gives new meaning to 'he maketh me to lie down in green pastures,' doesn't it?" Ada offers mischievously when they drive over to check she's okay.

Laura's house is missing shingles, and John climbs up to the roof, fixes a handful of spares in place, listens, amused, to how Annie Dornan found out her husband had been cheating on his new diabetic diet when the trash can blew over and the storm distributed Almond Joy wrappers the length and breadth of their yard. The Brennemans are fine – enjoying the crowd of visitors stopping by to check on that – and John spends a quiet few moments with Martha, glad to see the barn kept her safe, thinking with satisfaction of the annual maintenance he can set his hands to when they come back from the Millers. All in all it's a day stretched taut with small errands and bigger pieces of news, clean-up in their own yard and a dozen others besides, so much so that John never thinks to call the airline, check if the storm had any impact on their flight, and Rodney never thinks to check their messages, to see if the airline called.

"Dallas," says the helpful Northwest ticket agent at 9am the next morning.

"Cowboys!" Finn offers helpfully from Rodney's hip, thinking this is a game of NFL word association. John allows himself a satisfied, football-parent smile.

Rodney holds up a finger. "I'm sorry – you want us to connect to Toronto through _Dallas_?"

"We did try to contact you yesterday, Dr. McKay . . ."

"We had a small storm to contend with, or did that escape you?"

"Rodney . . . " John murmurs.

"What? _What?_ Does this make _any_ sense to you? Flying to _Texas_ in order to then fly the entire length of the United States – and more! – to get to my sister's house before midnight?"

"There's nothing else?" John asks.

"I'm sorry," says the ticket agent, her nameplate – JODIE – forlornly askew. "Yesterday's flights were delayed, we're still clearing the backlog of stranded passengers, we have crews on mandatory downtime . . ."

"Yeah, yeah," John nods, relieved that Finn is biting on Rodney's fingers and distracting him. "And we'll get into Toronto at – "

"7.15pm. American Airlines."

John grabs Rodney above the elbow and squeezes, hearing the intake of breath that means a rant is on the way. "Okay," he says quickly. "We'll do it. Sign us up."

Rodney makes a strangled noise of displeasure, and Finn giggles. "Daddy, you's being dine-saur 'gain," he grins.

The look on Jodie's face suggests she wholeheartedly agrees.

*****

The flight to Dallas-Fort Worth is uneventful, despite the plane being full of passengers who, much like them, are headed way out of their way in order to retrace their steps as the day progresses. The flight attendants are charmed by Finn, give Rodney all the coffee he needs, and if John thinks one of them's giving him the glad-eye, well, he keeps that nugget of information to himself.

"I hate Dallas," Rodney whines, unfastening his seat belt – in clear violation of all posted rules – as they taxi to the gate after landing.

"They play footballs here," Finn offers cheerfully, hands and face plastered to the window, watching the tarmac as they move.

"Yes, well, as I said . . . "

John shakes his head and elbows Rodney, amused. "C'mon," he says. "They'll have steak here for sure. And we've got a bunch of time. We can sit down, get a real meal – "

"- pay exhorbitant prices," Rodney continues.

John reaches for his hand, links their fingers and squeezes, watching Rodney's face until he turns to meet John's gaze.

"What?" Rodney asks. "What?"

But John just holds his hand, doesn't look away, and eventually Rodney sags a little, cheeks pinking. "Okay, okay," he mumbles, looking a little mollified. "Okay, I can – steak. I can do steak."

They eat until they're fit to burst at the Reata Grill, Finn reasonably well behaved save for questions posed in his outside voice: "Why is that man's hat so big?" and "Why they making funny sounds with their words?" and "Someone smells like barnyard, Daddy." Once everyone's stomach is full, John installs Rodney on a bench with their bags around his feet and an enormous cup of Starbucks dark roast in his hand, then proceeds to chase Finn the length of the terminal three times, Rodney all the while disavowing knowing anything about the shrieking banshees who seem intent on disturbing everyone else's travel plans. The running tires John out, but doesn't put a noticeable crimp in Finn's energy level, so Rodney takes up the slack and agrees to take their son to the bathroom, a journey that takes forty-five minutes once they discover that the glass sculpture on the terminal's south side makes music if you walk inside. All in all, John muses, half-asleep with a foot hooked around Finn's backpack, it's business as usual – two adults run ragged by one hyperactive boy, saving every ounce of energy they have to keep him in line. They confer on important business – pretzels for snacks, or ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's stand? – but mostly they half-listen to a long and meandering story about how Fruitcake and Baby Jesus are taking over the world while they're gone, and while Rodney tries to read a physics journal, it's only to give up ten minutes later and concede his blood pressure's already too high for such a thing. By the time they climb aboard their second flight of the day, they're all jittery from too much sugar – and in Rodney's case, too much caffeine – fingers stained with newspaper ink, jeans run afoul of Finn's slapdash method of eating, and Finn's tuckered out and fast asleep on John's shoulder, mumbling unhappily as his Baffa straps him into his seat.

"Can you imagine making this trip with two?" John whispers as they pull back from the gate, his body slumped toward Rodney's as if pushed there by some force beyond himself. He misses curling up with his head on Rodney's shoulder at the weirdest times.

Rodney looks at him with mild exasperation, coffee stain on his shirt, hair sticking up on end. "Yeah," he says simply, and something warm flares deep in John's gut.

"Me too," he breathes, tipping his head back against his seat, and reaching for Rodney's hand again, mentally reviews his choices of surrogate eggs until they're descending into Toronto and he's pretty sure he'll never eat diner food again.

*****

If there was ever a time to reconsider the idea of enlarging their family, it's the moment they show up at the Millers' home. The wailing of an unhappy infant, the blood-curdling yells of a childish slap-fight in progress, and the feeble shouts of a hapless father are easily heard long before Caleb manages to open the door.

"Hi," he says, waving a hand and stepping back so that they can come inside. "Welcome to bedlam."

"Thanks," says Rodney weakly. "I think?"

"UNCLE RODNEY," yells Madison, careening down the stairs at a speed that John admires. "Hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi."

That fast they're swallowed into the belly of the beast, at least four hundred children swirling around their legs (okay, three, John concedes, but it feels like more), everyone jostling, tripping over bags, shedding coats, and tugging on hands. The scent of coffee draws Rodney to the kitchen, kids shrieking in his wake, and Caleb follows for want (it seems) of knowing what else to do. John, disoriented by the sheer, impossible volume of the kids' shrieking, stumbles blindly into the living room; finds Jeannie nursing in an enormous armchair, her son snuffling quietly at her breast.

"Hey," says Jeannie, offering him an exhausted smile as he leans in to kiss her cheek.

"Hey," he whispers, running a finger over the baby's downy head.

"First time he's really latched on today," she says, crossing her ankles on the overstuffed ottoman at her feet. She laughs sheepishly. "Sorry. That's big news around here."

John grins. "I'll bet." He watches as she watches her son – marvels just a little at the content look on her face even as her house vibrates with madness. "You need anything? Can I do something?"

"Just sit," Jeannie says firmly. "You barely got here. How were the flights?"

"Oh, you know," John offers, but his commentary's cut short by Finn's arrival, cookie in one hand, energized beyond John's comprehension by his in-flight nap, seemingly ready to conquer all he sees.

"Is that th' baby?" he asks Jeannie, bounding over, standing on his tip toes to peer at the bundle in her arms.

"Yep," she replies. "This is Robbie. Brand new cousin."

Finn wrinkles his nose. "Why's he doing that thing on you?"

"He's feeding," Jeannie explains. "Drinking milk."

Finn tilts his head frowning. "You make milks?"

"Just for babies, yeah," Jeannie nods.

"An' all babies have milks?" Finn hoists himself up to lay half over the arm of the chair, swinging his feet above the floor.

"Yep. But not all babies get it like this. Some have bottles – that's how your Daddy and Baffa fed you."

"Huh." Finn watches Robbie feeding for a little while longer, then jumps down. "Okay, I go play trains now," and he runs off to more interesting pursuits, almost colliding with Rodney on the way.

"Oh, um – hi," Rodney says, waving a hand, smiling awkwardly. John feels for him – he can read Rodney's urge to get closer to the baby in every line of his body, yet his sister's boob is right there. "Um – can I get you anything?"

"Water," Jeannie says, smiling. "And god, I'm starving, can you – "

Rodney's stomach gurgles magnificently in response. "Um, sorry, I . . ."

"We're on it," John tells Jeannie with a nod, herds Rodney back toward the kitchen. The kids have dispersed, but that only means the noise has moved, not dissipated. "Who wants food!?" John yells at the bottom of the stairs, heading toward the kitchen once the pitch of screams from upstairs suggests the hungry minions have heard his call. There's the clatter of something like hobnail boots on the stairs, the babble that only children can trade in, and while Rodney's still hunting through the pantry for acceptable snacks, John's surrounded by grinning hellions, each with two very grabby hands.

"FOODS BAFFA," Finn shouts, jumping up and down, yanking at John's shirt. "FOODS, FOODS."

"Um, soup?" Rodney offers from within the bowels of the pantry.

"NOT SOUPS, SOUPS ARE STUPID," Bradley yells, fist curled in the spare fabric behind John's knee. "NOT SOUPS, TELL HIM MADDIE, TELL HIM."

"NO SOUUUUUUUUP," Maddie chimes in obligingly. "CHOCOLATE."

John stares them all down. "You are so not having chocolate for dinner. Try again."

"SOME CHEESE."

"ICE CREAM."

"COOKIES."

"Kraft dinner?" Rodney offers, peering out gingerly from behind the pantry door.

"STRAWBERRY MILKS!"

"PIZZA FROM OUTSIDE!"

"'NANAS!"

"Okay, CUT IT OUT," John yells. When Madison bursts into laughter he figures he's well and truly screwed.

Still, the reins of responsibility have now passed from parents to uncles – Rodney finds Caleb standing vacantly in the hall and persuades him to go nap before he falls down in a heap; John sets three small butts on kitchen stools and serves them mac'n'cheese and makes it clear he'll hear no bitching about it; Rodney takes his sister a sandwich, cut up into manageable bites. After dinner, and clean-up – ("Oh please, I know you know how to do dishes. You did them when you visited." "That was _years_ ago, Uncle John! I forgot howwwww!") – John herds the kids upstairs for baths and isn't above bribing them with the promise of $10 to spend at the mall if they shut up and go to bed and leave the grown-ups alone. Between them, he and Rodney can just about manage pajamas and bedtime stories and pleas for glasses of water, but it's a close run thing, and John loses Bradley more than once. By the time he comes downstairs – a hamper of laundry in his hands; always, there's laundry – Rodney has baby Robbie in his arms and Jeannie's sacked heavily on the couch, a blanket tucked over her by hands she surely thought would never be so competent or kind.

"He's pretty cute, huh?" Rodney whispers, following John to the laundry room.

"Yeah," John says, grinning despite the ringing in his ears from fourteen verses of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. "Pretty cute. You reckon he looks like Caleb or Jeannie?"

Rodney huffs. "I've always thought that was such a stupid question. He looks like a little old man, that's what. Tiny, wrinkled, and 90 years old if he's a day."

"So – you're saying that's what I've got to look forward to?" John asks innocently. "Waking up to that face across the bed?"

Rodney grins at him, the glee on his face sudden and blinding. "And probably just as bald."

John snorts and sets the whites to running. "I suppose I can handle that."

"Me being bald?"

John glances at his receding hairline thinking, 'buddy, you're almost there.' "That face."

"Oh." Rodney glances at Robbie, who's yawning and pulling all manner of expressions as he tries to fall asleep. "Cool."

"Yeah," John smiles, and finds he has to lean in, press a kiss to the crown of Robbie's head.

*****

There are four adults in the Miller home, and four children, one of whom can't actually move of his own free will. It ought to be easy enough to make sure everyone's cared for, yet somehow the mathematics of childcare follows no such discernable logic. John needs a couple more hands, eyes in the back of his head, and about twenty times as much patience as he's actually been given to keep up with three cousins intent upon finding the noisiest, most uncooperative, aggravating ways to pass the time. There seems to be some unwritten law that where three are gathered, two must gang up on the third, and while there's maybe something to be said for the egalitarian way they all take up the role of 'third' at some point during the day, John's not ready to be philosophical about the situation when it involves pulled hair, kicked shins, food fights and split lips. He and Rodney work with what they know – time outs; dessert denial; monumental distraction, a tactic that always seems to work with Finn – but the ice rink and the mall and the movies and the donut shop only seem to provide one (or two, or all three) of the kids new scenery in which to melt down.

"I think they're maybe not adjusting to the new baby so well," Rodney says, watching helplessly as the kids fight over who gets which seat in the minivan.

"You think?" John snips, so exhausted and cranky he could spit.

"Yes," Rodney says tightly. "I _think_."

"What?" John asks, hands spread as if searching for whatever manic Rodney button he just tripped.

"Implying that I can't think," Rodney grumbles, getting into the passenger seat of the van. "I can think, okay! Even amid this, I can think!"

They're gifted a sliver of salvation on Monday morning when Madison heads off to school, but that still leaves them with a couple of kids too many considering how loudly Robbie wants to wail, how (understandably) short-tempered Jeannie is, how fervently Bradley tells Caleb he hates him, and how perfectly pitched Finn's whine becomes when he asks why _he_ doesn't have a baby brother or sister and why don't _they_ live in Toronto and why should _he_ have to wear pants, it's just not _fair_.

"You don't," Rodney concedes, perched on a stool at the kitchen island, head propped up wearily on one hand. "You can go around pantless and get frostbite. It's okay. Maybe you could take up vodka next."

"Wha's vodka?" Finn asks perkily, and John decides it's time to go back on laundry duty rather than strangle Rodney with an errant loop of paper towels.

By nightfall they're exhausted, tumbling into bed not long after the kids. "Shouldn't we pitch in with the baby?" Rodney asks, crawling into bed, clumsy with fatigue. "Caleb and . . . " He waves a hand. "Whatshername."

"Jeannie?" John asks, shucking his jeans.

"Hmmmm, her," Rodney mumbles, face half-obscured by his pillow. "They need sleep."

"Yeah. Whatever," John agrees gracelessly, flopping down beside him. "I don't care."

"I think – " Rodney says. "I think _I'm_ supposed to care because is biological. _You_ are by marriage, so no."

John squints at him. "What?"

Rodney sighs. "Sisters are very troubling."

"Uh-huh?"

"Very. Sleep now."

And John would smack him except for the fact that he's already beginning to snore and there are things you just don't do to a man who's spent the day wrangling children – waking him up being top of that list.

Apparently no one told their nephew this. By 2am the wails sounding from the next room are enough to rattle the fillings in John's teeth.

"Goddamit," he sighs, listening to the shuffle and thump of movement from Jeannie and Caleb's room."

"How can this _be_?" Rodney whispers helplessly beside him. "I swear it's five minutes since he last went down."

John pulls a pillow over his head and expresses something fervent and rude with a puff of air.

"Ohhhhh, no," Rodney says, pulling the pillow away. "I'm awake, you're awake, it's our new deal."

"That rule only applies when it's _our_ kid," John hisses back. "The baby needs nipples. We don't have nipples. Ergo, we sleep."

"We do too have nipples!"

"Not the kind he wants!"

Rodney makes a small noise of frustration and flops onto his back. He's silent for a moment, then pokes John in the arm. "Have sex with me."

John blinks at the dim outline of Rodney's shoulder for a second, brain trying to catch up with a conversation that's already left him behind. "What?"

"Have sex with me!"

John raises his head, peers at Rodney, and pulls a face. " _No._ "

"Oh, well, _that's_ nice . . ."

"Well, it's like, half-past crazy, Rodney, and you want to fuck?"

Rodney lifts his chin. "Yes."

"Well, too bad, I'm going back to sleep." John buries his face in his pillow again.

"C'mon," Rodney wheedles. "I'm awake, I'm in bed, I can be naked in about three seconds. Have sex with me."

John shakes his head, nose rubbing against winkled cotton. "I'm tired. You're tired. Been saying so for days."

"Yes, well, I think we've established that my cock can do its thing no matter what. Come on, chop chop, it'll pass the time."

"Until _what_?"

"Until – it's . . . time to do something else."

John groans helplessly. "Like sleep? Let's try that _now_."

Rodney pokes him. "Sex!"

" _Rod_ ney . . ."

"How can you not want sex?"

John lifts his head. "Because I'm tired and want to kill you," he says deadpan.

"Pleeeease . . . "

With a strangled noise of spent patience, John reaches out and drags Rodney firmly into the circle of his arms. "Sleep. God. Please, before I smother you."

Rodney sighs heavily. "We haven't had sex in – "

"I know."

"I _like_ sex with you."

"And I like sex with _you_ ," John mumbles, thinking this has surely got to be one of the top ten stupidest conversations he's ever had.

"Can we have sex sometime?"

John whimpers and drapes himself half over Rodney's body. "Yes. God, as much as you want, just not right now."

Rodney strokes his back. "Okay."

"Okay," John murmurs, closing his eyes.

Which is when Robbie begins to wail again with the vigor of the young, strong, and desperately pissed off.

*****

By the time John stumbles downstairs next morning, things are unusually quiet. Bradley and Finn are playing with Legos in the living room, Jeannie's nowhere to be seen, and Caleb's inventorying the cupboards, making a shopping list for a run to the grocery store. "Hey," John says, scratching his scalp, confused.

Caleb nods at him. "Coffee's made."

"Cool." John shuffles to pour himself a cup, rounds the island and perches on a stool. "So, what happened?" he asks, burying his nose in his mug.

"Huh?"

"You drug everyone?"

Caleb laughs ruefully. "Jeannie took Madison to school – said if she didn't get out of the house she was going to kill someone. Me, most likely. The boys decided on Legos for themselves. Baby's asleep."

"Huh." John watches, bleary-eyed as Caleb moves to the pantry, scribbling on a piece of paper as he looks at the shelves. "Weird."

"I am not weird," Rodney says, blustering in, bypassing Caleb completely and zoning in on the coffee pot. " _You're_ weird, with your no sex and your talking to yourself, and, your _no sex_ and you know what else? You won't let me rim you, and that is _weird_."

John freezes, staring while Rodney fills a mug and takes his first few clarifying gulps of the morning.

Caleb clears his throat and closes the pantry door. "Well," he offers, looking pale. "I need to go set myself on fire now . . . "

"Oh," Rodney offers, turning around, blinking. "Oh. Oh – um, morning, Caleb."

Caleb waves haplessly and shuffles away. John just continues to stare.

" _What_?" Rodney asks, looking his direction.

"I – I – " John can't seem to get his brain to engage with his voice. " _Rimming_?"

Rodney lifts his chin. "It's an extremely pleasurable activity that – "

"I _know_ what it is. I'm thinking more along the lines of – what the hell?"

Rodney slurps at his coffee, swallows, and re-tilts his chin. "Well. I was just – lying in bed, thinking about not having sex, and then I got to thinking about the kind of sex I'd like to have, and then I got thinking about the kind of sex I'd like to have but that you won't _let_ me have and – "

"You were lying in bed thinking about my _asshole_?" John hisses.

"Maybe?" Rodney says petulantly. "I don't have a problem with your asshole. Do you have a problem with mine?"

John blinks. "I cannot believe we're having this conversation."

"We're adults! We're supposed to talk about . . . . stuff!"

"Not in your sister's kitchen before we've eaten breakfast!" John says indignantly.

"Well . . . " Rodney rolls his shoulders. "Okay, you might have a point, my lack of coffee probably contributed to – "

John stares at him some more.

"Perhaps we can talk about it later." Rodney suggests, pulling the carafe from the coffee maker and refilling John's cup. "Such as – in a whole other country. Iowa. Home. That place."

John keeps staring.

Rodney huffs, flustered, and slides the carafe back into place. "I'm sorry!" he blurts when John shows no sign of breaking his silence. "I just – I worry."

John slowly arches an eyebrow. It's entirely possible Rodney has lost his mind. "About . . . rimming?"

"No." Rodney stares into his mug. "About us."

John screws up both his eyes, then opens one, peering at Rodney as though the shift in perception might make the morning comprehensible. "Us?"

"We've been – this week's been . . ." Rodney gestures uncomfortably. "I mean, I love them, the kids, and Jeannie, and you and – well, I feel something not altogether unpleasant when I contemplate Caleb's existence, but . . . "

John narrows his eyes. "You don't want another kid," he says slowly. "This week – you've decided . . ."

"No!" Rodney looks up, stricken, then waves a hand urgently. "Wait, no, I don't mean no to _that_ , I don't mean no, no baby, I mean – no, that's not it."

John tries to follow and waits, helplessly, for Rodney to make an ounce of sense.

"I want another kid, yes, definitely, but I _worry_ ," Rodney clarifies, rubbing the side of his mug with one thumb.

"About what?"

"About _us_."

John hangs his head and rubs the back of his neck. "We're talking in circles . . ."

"Well, you're not really talking at all . . ."

"Rodney – "

"I just mean – I haven't . . . we haven't had sex in more than a week and – "

John goes back to staring. "Are you _serious_? _That's_ what's bothering you? A house full of kids and a newborn and you're pissed off that you haven't . . ."

"Stop it," Rodney snaps. "I'm not talking about being some insatiable horn dog who wants to get off." His gaze slides away. "Well. Okay, I like getting off, it'd be a lie to suggest I don't, but I – I have a hand. I have a hand and a shower and Kleenex and towels and lotion and spit and god only knows what else – "

"If there's machinery involved, don't tell me," John offers weakly.

Rodney stares at him incredulously. "Shut _up_."

John complies mostly out of having no clue what else to say.

"It's just that – " Rodney sets down his coffee cup then picks it up again. "I like it not because we're getting off – although that's part of it, and yes, sometimes I _just_ want to get off, with you, because it's far, far better than using my hand, and because you're . . . " He gestures. "You. But that's not what I'm talking about, that's not what has me – "

"Crazy?"

Rodney glowers. "Worried. I just – I just . . ."

"Would you spit it out?" John asks wearily.

"I miss being that close to you," Rodney says in a rush, before pressing his lips into a thin, tight line.

"You – "

"I miss being . . ." Rodney screws up his mouth, fumbling his coffee cup back onto the counter. "It's intimate. And warm and – us. Just us. And . . . I don't want to lose that."

John blinks at him. "Why would you lose that?"

"Because there'll be two kids and visitors and we'll be exhausted and I don't know if I'll be any good at any of it. We haven't been any good at it here."

"With four kids," John points out, sliding off his stool.

"And four adults!" Rodney shoots back. "There'll be two of us and two kids and one will be helpless and small and crying a lot and susceptible to disease and there'll be even more laundry and grocery shopping and if Finn flips out the way Maddie and Bradley . . ."

John rounds the island, slowly easing himself into Rodney's personal space, as though gentling a skittish animal. "Hey."

"And I want another, I think it'd be good for us, for Finn, and not _just_ good for us, it's not an equation, I just _want_ one, you know? And I know you want one, and – "

"Hey," John repeats in a whisper, taking Rodney's face between his hands.

"I just don't want to do it and not have you too," Rodney says hoarsely.

John kisses him gently, a brush of lips to still all the words running over Rodney's tongue. "Okay."

Rodney sags against him, pushing his nose into John's shoulder. "Sorry."

John slides his arms around him, takes his weight, sways with him held close, back and forth. "I get it now."

Rodney exhales clumsily. "I'll burn up with embarrassment soon and then we can forget we ever – "

"No." John cradles the back of Rodney's head with one hand. "No. We're not forgetting. We're gonna do this right."

The front door slams and Jeannie yells a greeting. Rodney startles but John doesn't let go.

"What's a person got to do around here to – " Jeannie quiets as she enters the kitchen. "Everything okay?"

John smiles as Rodney pulls back – doesn't let him go without kissing his forehead. "Yeah. We figured it out."

"Caleb might be – " Rodney swallows and doesn't quite meet Jeannie's eye. "A little traumatized."

"Were you fucking on the island?" Jeannie asks.

Rodney squeaks in horror. "Were we - _no_ , we were not fucking on the – who do you think we _are_?"

Jeannie grins at him, unrepentant. "You?" she says.

"And what exactly does that mean?" Rodney asks as Jeannie elbows past for the coffee.

John slides back onto his stool and watches as they argue, smiling a little as his world tilts slowly back to rights.

******

There are tantrums when they pack up and head back to Iowa – tantrums from all the kids, from Jeannie when she realizes Rodney paid the utility bills for the next three months and upgraded their computer, from Caleb when a graduate student calls in the middle of everything, forcing him to yell invective into the receiver about family leave and the appropriate use of the staff directory.

"I almost like him now," Rodney whispers to John, looking fondly at the vein throbbing in Caleb's temple.

"Jerk," John says cheerfully, and hugs Jeannie tight, extricates himself from the grasping hands of Miller children, and hefts too many suitcases down toward the cab at the curb, Finn trotting uncertainly behind.

"I wonder if Fruitcake and Baby Jesus got new feathers," he says, scrambling into the back seat and letting John buckle him in.

"Maybe some," John suggests. "But we've only been gone a week."

"That's for _ever_ ," Finn tells him solemnly, and John thinks of his farm, of Burp and Ada, of the Brennemans and his high-noon plane, of the rich, dark earth of his garden plot, of Rodney's need to get laid – and, smiling, almost agrees.

*****

John's quiet for most of the flight home, turning over Rodney's worry in his mind, smoothing it against his own thoughts like a pebble caught in the undertow. They've been busy, he knows, but it's more than that – it's the way they've grown to accept that they'll grab dinner on their own, not together; it's conceding to late nights at the lab and early mornings at someone else's farm. It's herding Finn through every day with the minimum of damage to person, property, or feelings; it's being so exhausted when they go to bed they can barely talk. Rodney's fast asleep beside him, and John plays with the strap on his watch, rubs his fingers over Rodney's pulse point, soothing himself with the steady beat of his blood. They can change things, he knows as much, but it's figuring out how that's problematic. Maybe just time, he wonders – maybe just a little time together's what they need to fix what's frayed and torn.

There's no time to discuss it when they get off the plane – Rodney turns his cell phone on the very second they step onto the jetway in Cedar Rapids and discovers three agitated messages from his grad students huddling feebly at the other end of the line. "Do they wait for me to be in the air before they call?" he asks John incredulously. John makes what he hopes is a sympathetic face but privately thinks it's exactly what _he'd_ do. "Amazing," Rodney mutters, listening to his voicemail, "amazing, amazing, utterly new heights of idiocy and . . ." He snaps his phone shut. "I have to go in."

"Aw, c'mon . . ." John reaches down and hoists Finn up and onto his hip, more to keep him from wandering off to investigate the wonders of the floor-to-ceiling windows along the concourse than because he's asking to be held. "Now?"

"Yes, now," Rodney says grumpily. " They're imbeciles, all of them, not a one is making it out of here with a Ph.D. if I have any say in the matter, especially not after . . ." He sighs. "I – sorry. I don't – it's out of the way, I can always rent a car to go to town and then – "

John leans over and clips him up the back of the head. "Moron."

"Well, what?"

"I don't know, I was just looking forward to it being the three of us and not, you know, the extended batshit of us."

Rodney flushes a little. "Me too."

"So let it wait until tomorrow."

"I really can't. You don't understand what they've – they . . . I can't even _explain_ what they've done but . . ."

John slows so that Rodney's forced to slow too; so that the rest of the passengers drifting through the concourse pass them both. "You'll come home tonight?" he asks.

"Provided I can –"

"You'll come home tonight?" John asks again.

Finn watches them both solemnly.

Rodney nods. "Sure. Okay. I can come home. I can – yeah. Do that." And he goes quietly when John tugs at his sleeve, pulls him in and hugs him, one-armed, pressing a kiss into his hair. "You're acting weird," Rodney mumbles, but he looks pleased.

"Yeah, well, your family brings that out in a person," John says and starts walking again.

They drive into Iowa City, drop Rodney off at the lab, meander over to the grocery store to stock up on necessities like bread and milk. Ada's grandson's gone before they're home, and Finn runs up to the house, flips back the doormat on the porch and scrabbles the key up out of the dust beneath. "Home!" he crows jubilantly, pulling on the screen door and trying to reach to put the key in the lock. From inside the house, Burp barks a welcome.

John's seized by a memory of himself not much older, of his grandmother pulling the door open from inside; recalls what it was to come here after Antarctica, to pick up the same key and let himself into the house. He shifts the groceries from his right arm to his left, climbs the porch steps and lays a hand on the top of his son's head. "You need some help?" he asks, and his voice is strange – thick with the history that's winding around him.

"Lil bit," Finn says, and lets John help him slide the key into the lock. The door swings open and Burp barks his joy, rushes at Finn and licks his face, offers a doggy grin when Finn squeals with glee.

"Down, boy," John says, laughing, Burp's tail whacking his knees as he pushes past to put down his bag.

"I let him out!" Finn offers, and fumbles with the screen door catch, finagles it open with childish fingers and laughs happily as Burp streaks across the yard. "Home, home, home," Finn chants, stamping his feet.

And John misses Rodney so fiercely in that moment he has to swallow hard to push it down, breathe in the clean, familiar air of the kitchen for a second before he can step back outside, clatter down the steps, haul in bags and start settling in.

*****

 

It's almost ten by the time Rodney calls to say he's practically done, and John packs Finn into the car, makes the drive into town. It's a quiet ride, there and back, Finn singing softly and drowsily from his booster seat, Rodney processing the idiocy of his grad students in low, baffled tones.

"I'll have to go in early," Rodney mumbles, slumped against the window. "Fend off the apocalypse."

"Wow," John murmurs. "End of the world, already."

Rodney grumbles low in his throat and reaches over to rest a hand on John's thigh. "They're going to kill me. Be the death of me. Whatever."

"You'll fix it," John reassures.

"Of course I'll fix it," Rodney huffs. "I just wish I didn't have to. I was looking forward to just . . ." He sighs. "Us."

John's not sure he's ever heard Rodney regret his work before – rail against the imbeciles he works with, sure; lambast the frailties of university administrators and the entire math department at MIT, but never the actual fact of getting up and going to the lab. "I'm not going anywhere," he points out.

"That's not what I mean." Rodney's eyes are closing. "Not what I . . ." He yawns, and falls silent for the rest of the drive.

They fumble through the business of getting Finn to bed, shutting off lights, reminding each other of bills and errands while they navigate the bathroom, toothbrushes, clean sheets. Rodney crawls into bed when the last light's doused, plasters himself against John's side and lets out a long breath that sounds unhappy and overwhelmed. John reaches up to scritch his fingers through his hair. "When will you be done?" he asks.

Rodney hums vaguely. "With what?"

"Fending off the apocalypse."

"That." Rodney groans and rolls onto his side, back to John, reaches over and pulls John after him, holding John's hand against his chest. "Couple days."

"Overnight?" John asks, nosing the back of Rodney's neck.

"Be quicker," Rodney mumbles.

"Okay." John rubs his thumb against Rodney's skin. "So . . . Tuesday."

"Tuesday," Rodney agrees. "Wait." He hmmphs, as if he's too tired to make sense of what they're saying. "What's Tuesday?"

"Us," John murmurs, closing his eyes. "Just us."

*****

Rodney makes it home Monday evening right around dinnertime, bags beneath his eyes and hair sticking up in twenty different directions at once. He kisses John absently, drops his bags and papers by the kitchen table, shrugs out of his coat and goes off to join Finn amid a pile of Hot Wheels on the living room floor.

It would normally be good cause for concern, the way Rodney's yawning, the ink smudged up his cheek and across the back of his hands, the way he's blinking and needs an extra second to process the meandering path of Finn's narrative about the past two days. But knowing what he knows, phone calls made, Finn's overnight bag already packed, chores done, John only feels gleeful. He slides a pizza into the oven, pops a beer, opens the freezer and eyes the bag of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee he's stowed behind the peas.

"What're you doing?" Rodney yells.

"Nothing," John calls back, and wanders into the living room to hear about the weaknesses of the graduate education system, the number of new chicken-calls Fruitcake and Baby Jesus have bocked, and to get his knee drooled on by an affectionate dog.

The alarm goes off at its regular ungodly hour next morning, and John slaps it quiet with the palm of his hand. Rodney groans unhappily beside him, mashing his face deeper into his pillow. "Dun wanna."

John grins sleepily and rolls to kiss Rodney's shoulder. "You don't have to. Tuesday, remember? Sleep in, I'll see to him."

Rodney whimpers thankfully. "Sleeeeeeeeep."

John laughs as he eases out from beneath the covers, trying not to let in too much cold air. "Yeah, buddy. Sleep." And he pads out of the bedroom to rouse their son, let the dog out, brew a pot of the best coffee money can buy, and make a pile of PB&J sandwiches fit to satisfy the midday appetite of any three-year-old boy. It's merry madness for a good solid hour, just as it is every morning – Burp trying to steal the toast from John's plate, Finn insisting that it's warm enough for shorts, everyone losing something (keys, cardboard telescopes, half-chewed tennis balls, the feed for the chickens) and finding something they don't need (a quarter beneath the table, a pair of old boxer shorts beneath the couch, a chocolate bar behind the oatmeal tub, a silverfish named Fred). By the time John comes back from dropping Finn at Laura's – with $20 for emergencies and an overnight bag full of Oreos and toys – he's more than ready to crawl back into bed. The fact that Rodney's still there is just added incentive.

Rodney's fashioned himself into some kind of man-burrito since John saw him last, cocooned in sheets and comforter both, only his hair showing amid the pillows. John laughs and slowly tries to pry the covers from Rodney's body, earning him a muffled "nooooooo," and an outraged yelp when he tugs, Rodney peering over the duvet and eyeing him as if he's no one he knows. "Whaaaaat?" he whines.

John grins. "Lemme in."

Rodney grumbles and concedes to roll onto his side, freeing up some space for John to wiggle in. John's naked, half hard, slides his cock against the welcome curve of Rodney's ass and kisses his neck. "Mmmmmm," he hums.

"Oh, hello," Rodney says, wriggling against him a little. "No clothes."

"Yeah," John smiles, peppering the side of Rodney's neck with tiny, stinging bites. "And you have too many."

Rodney lets out a long, contented breath that only hitches once or twice. "No work today?"

"Nope," John murmurs, sliding his hand up under Rodney's t-shirt and scratching his belly with his broad, blunt nails. "Nothing today. Nothing tomorrow. And Finn's staying at Laura's overnight."

Rodney stills in John's arms for a second, then flails his way gracelessly to roll over and look John in the face. "Huh?"

John kisses him warmly, morning breath and all, taking his time to explore Rodney's mouth, to lick and tease until Rodney's trembling just a little. "We need some time," he says at last, kissing Rodney's chin, licking against the grain of his stubble. "You and me. No kid. No jobs. Just us."

"And . . . and bed?" Rodney says hopefully, stroking John's spine.

John laughs. "Would you get naked already?" he asks, and Rodney seems to get with the program then, scrambles to pull off his t-shirt, yank off his boxers, plaster himself to John and rub against his thigh.

"I'm naked," Rodney points out between rough, desperate kisses. "I'm totally naked now."

John grins against his mouth, rolling his hips. "Noticed," he whispers, and that's all the talking for a while save, "god," and "there," and each other's names and maybe a curse. It's rough and sweaty and there's no hope of taking it slow, not this first time – it feels too good to thrust and tangle and pull at each other, straining and pushing and tensing up so fast that . . . "Oh, _fuck_ ," John gasps, coming first, shuddering against Rodney, clutching at his back.

"Yeah, yeah," Rodney's chanting, holding on just as hard, and John groans again when he feels Rodney spurt between them, when the pressure of his hips pulls another shiver from John's rapidly melting spine. "God," Rodney says fervently at last, panting and grinning stupidly. "God."

John leans in and kisses him, soft and lush and unhurried now the first rush of need is spent, sliding his fingers up into Rodney's hair. "Mmmmm," he murmurs, intent on Rodney's mouth, on the way it shifts and responds to his own; the way Rodney's tongue is curiously hesitant at first, then bolder, sweeter; the way they're never going to catch their breath if they keep on like this.

"I can't get it up again anytime soon," Rodney mumbles, sounding amused as John kisses the very corner of his mouth.

"Not the point," John whispers, shifting to lie on his back, pulling Rodney over him. "Just kissin'." He sucks lightly against Rodney's throat. Rodney makes a soft, strangled sound and pulls away just enough to look John in the face, shifting to touch his cheek, to graze his thumb over John's bottom lip. John lifts his head and sucks the tip into his mouth, then relaxes again, smiles at Rodney. "What?"

"You – you want to make out with me?" Rodney asks, sounding slightly bewildered.

John grins at him, sliding a hand down Rodney's back. "Exactly," he says.

Rodney blinks and then grins at him. "You want to make out with me!" he crows softly. "You do! You do!"

John laughs – har har har – and pinches his ass. "I said so, didn't I?"

"You do!" Rodney says again, and leans back in for more kisses, for the kind of languid, after-sex, unhurried making out they haven't had the opportunity to linger over in months. "Oh," Rodney breathes between long, greedy moments at John's mouth. "Oh, I've missed this."

John rolls them both, reverses their positions, goes back to teasing Rodney with every kiss in his arsenal. "Me too," he says, and feels Rodney's lips turn up against his in a smile.

They separate eventually, lips swollen, bellies sticky, stumble to the shower and find they can't quite stop touching, exploring each other's bodies with hands more used to wielding tools, writing on whiteboards, stowing groceries, typing of late. They laugh, curiously bashful as they slide sudsy fingers into each other's hair, as they kiss wet shoulders and jaws and ears, as they clean each other's thighs, balls, hips and cocks. John can feel arousal curling slow and sly in his belly again but doesn't feel any need to hurry it – steals one last kiss as Rodney turns off the water, grabs a towel and makes a desultory swipe at his hair, pads back into the bedroom, damp and relaxed, and sprawls across their bed, closing his eyes.

"You," says Rodney, lying down behind him, pressing in close, "have the best ideas."

"Hmmm," John says, sighing happily as Rodney mouths the top of his spine, scatters soft, wet kisses across the breadth of his shoulders. He moves without complaint when Rodney pushes him gently, rolls a little more onto his belly, bends a leg to stabilize his weight.

"Gorgeous," Rodney murmurs, the kisses inching down John's back. "Do you have any idea?" One hand's curled around John's hip, fingers flexing gently.

John huffs a breath, feels his face heat.

"All this skin," Rodney murmurs, taking his time, sucking below one of John's shoulderblades, lavishing his back with such attention that John sighs again.

"Feels good," he mumbles, content to just lie still and soak up every one of Rodney's touches. His skin breaks out into goosebumps as Rodney's hand slides down to cup his ass, fingers skimming the damp crease at the top of his thigh, making John shiver.

"Glad," Rodney whispers, and John feels the word as breath expelled, Rodney's mouth slipping lower to the small of his back.

John's sensitive there – always has been – the nerve endings at the base of his spine sending flares of jittery, restless heat fluttering through his body. He shifts against the bed involuntarily, pulls up his knee, rubs against the sheets just a little – it's not cheating, not quite. Rodney hums happily behind him, grazes his teeth just above the rise of John's ass, and John shivers, groans very softly, rocking his hips just a fraction in response.

"Beautiful," Rodney whispers, hand softly, gently kneading John's ass, and John's half expecting the brush of a fingertip between his cheeks, has his eyes closed and his mouth open, panting gently in anticipation of it when he feels Rodney move, feels a chase of breath where he'd been expecting a hand, and then it's Rodney's _tongue_ there, not his fingertip, his tongue that slides slick and certain over his hole.

John jolts, grabs the sheets in one hand and sucks in a breath – he hadn't been expecting – not for it to feel like –

"Okay?" Rodney asks, gentling him with a kiss to his back.

John blinks and swallows. "Yeah," he hears himself say, and that's no less a shock to his system than the next touch of Rodney's mouth, the drag of his tongue, and the way his body lights up like Rodney's struck a match. He bites his lip, lets his eyes slam closed as Rodney flat out _kisses_ him back there, and when the tip of Rodney's tongue slides inside him, he tips his head back and groans. He feels Rodney shudder at the sound, feels his cheeks pushed apart and Rodney's face press against him, feels himself grow harder with every slick, lewd touch, every soft, wet sound. "Rodney," he grits out, shocked by the way his voice catches in his throat. "God, don't stop, don't stop," and he gives up all pretense, cants his hips to find Rodney's mouth, more of his tongue, the pressure of his hands, god, so good.

Rodney doesn't stop – redoubles his efforts, licks and sucks, teases and uses the very tips of his teeth, slides his tongue into John's body and out again, whimpers each time John moans. John's kneading the sheets with one hand by now, damp and sticky, an ache in his thighs, and he needs to come, can't, not like this, not quite. "Rodney," he begs. "God, Rodney, I – please . . ."

And Rodney helps him, pulls him up and back onto his knees, slides a hand from the base of his spine up into his hair, settles him with his face against the pillows. He pulls back and noses back between John's cheeks again – John could weep with it, the feeling, the slow, devastating burn that's making him shake, and when Rodney reaches for his cock, jacks him slow and steady, it's barely any time at all before he comes with a shout that he's almost embarrassed to make, his body emptying with such force that he collapses against the bed, Rodney's hand trapped beneath him as he shudders helplessly and falls apart. They stay like that for a long, aching moment, tangled and still, their only movement the heaving cadence of their breath – then John rolls onto his back, needing to see Rodney's face, whispers, "Come on me," and Rodney shivers, says, "Are you sure?" But he already has his cock in hand, rocking his hips unsteadily as he kneels above John, and when John's fingers graze the outside of his thighs, pushing the hair the wrong way, he comes with a gasp, striping John's belly, making John moan again. Rodney collapses on him gracelessly, mashes his face against John's shoulder, and it's damp and uncomfortable, and John wraps his shaking arms around him; wouldn't have it any other way.

They fall asleep – at least John figures as much when he wakes back up, though he doesn't remember deciding it was time for a nap. Rodney's sacked out above him, a warm and anchoring weight, and John contents himself with gentle touches, coaxing Rodney toward wakefulness, kissing him messily when he finally turns his head.

"Did you like it?" Rodney asks, blinking drowsily. He looks like he has half a mind to be smug, but he's not awake enough to really follow through.

"Yeah," John smiles, and looks at Rodney's shoulder rather than his face. His ears are turning pink, he can feel them, and when Rodney kisses one, he knows for sure.

"You're ridiculous," Rodney says fondly.

"Yeah," John agrees, and keeps holding onto him.

"And I need coffee," Rodney says.

John laughs, and slaps Rodney's ass just once. "Romantic," he grins, and kisses Rodney again, lets him roll off and out of bed, watches him wrinkle his nose as he examines the mess that covers them both.

"We're going to be responsible for a local drought," Rodney says, shuffling toward the bathroom.

"Okay," John says contentedly, and lies there a little longer.

*****

It's tempting to consider spending the whole day in bed – tempting, at least, once they change the sheets – but John has plans, insists Rodney find a decent pair of trousers, a not-too visually chaotic shirt, slips into a white button-down himself, pulls on his blue suit jacket even though he's wearing jeans. Rodney swallows when he sees him, hands fluttering uselessly as he points and tries to find whatever it is he wants to say.

"We're going out to dinner," John tells him, slipping his wallet into his back pocket.

"You look – nice," Rodney says, eyes wide, gaze skimming restlessly over the planes of John's shoulders.

John smirks, pleased. "Thanks." He fastens his watch. "You do too."

"Oh – oh, I'm . . . well, I clean up okay, I suppose," Rodney says, smoothing a hand over his belly. John crosses the bedroom, stops a barest breath away from Rodney's body, watches him until Rodney breaks, says, "What, what?"

"I think you look great," he says simply, and Rodney turns a little pink, tilts his head as if to shrug the compliment off, but he's smiling now.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." Rodney tugs on one of John's lapels, smoothes it with his fingers. "This had better be a really great dinner, because mostly I want to peel you out of that jacket and . . ."

"It'll be a great dinner," John says, linking his fingers in Rodney's and pulling him toward the door.

"Really great?"

John huffs a breath of laughter. "Really great. Come _on_. Or I'll open the truck door for you and . . ."

Rodney squawks behind him as they clatter down the stairs. "I am not a _girl!_."

" . . . people'll think that . . ."

"You don't play fair, Sheppard."

John shrugs his lack of caring and swipes the truck keys from the dish on the kitchen table. "Ready?"

"Ready," Rodney says, fidgeting. "Yes, yes, ready, and actually, now I think about it, rather hungry, so if we could just . . ."

John unceremoniously shoves him out the door.

It confuses the hell out of Rodney when John pulls left out of the driveway instead of right toward their usual Iowa City haunts. "If you're taking me to Happy Joe's for dinner, I will . . ."

John pulls a face. "Hey. It's our _date_. I can do better than Happy Joe's."

"Have we ever actually been on a date before?" Rodney asks, confused.

John thinks about it. "Well, I took you to that concert."

"Is it a date if it's also a trip?"

John frowns. "Like – acid trip?"

Rodney stares at him incredulously. "Why – _why_ would that be the first thing to come to mind? And _no_ , as in, I get on a plane and fly to – " he waves a hand " – here and . . ."

"Oh. That kind of trip." John makes another left and confuses Rodney even further if the squeak he makes is anything to go by. "Well. I don't know."

"There ought to be a rule book."

John twitches. "Pretty sure we don't exactly fit a rule book."

"If we made one we would."

"Well, but then we couldn't have used it."

"But maybe other people would benefit," Rodney says, drumming his fingers on his thigh. "Other people who have strange and unexpected relationships predicated on . . . on . . . well. Burst tires and beer and your not entirely unattractive brain."

John snorts. "Thanks."

"It's a high compliment," Rodney sniffs.

"Oh, I know it," John agrees.

"But perhaps you have a point. After all, I am, as numerous indicators of intelligence and social stability have proven, one of a kind, and you're . . ." He looks over at John. "Well. I can't imagine there are many of you either."

John smirks. "Aw, shucks, Rodney."

"Regardless, none of this changes the fact that I don't think we've actually ever _dated_. Which – isn't that strange? I mean . . . don't most people wait until after they've dated a while before they settle down and have kids?" Rodney chews his bottom lip. "We're doing this backwards."

John tilts his head to the side, considering the idea. "We seem to be doing okay."

"Yeah." Rodney eyes him. "Huh."

John glances his way. "Huh, what?"

"I think we should go on dates more often."

"Okay."

"I could plan the next one."

John nods. "Sounds good to me."

"Only there have to be ground rules.'

John slows for a four-way stop. "Here we go . . ."

"For example, you are not allowed to force me to participate in team sports."

John blinks. "'Cause I was gonna make you work out with the Hawkeyes . . ."

"Yes, exactly, something _exactly_ like that, and just, no."

"No aerobic activities with large sportsmen, got it," John says fondly. "You're nuts."

"I know you."

"Yeah?" John waves at Mr. Hitchinson, still out plowing his fields; gets a tip of a John Deere baseball cap in return. "How do you know I'm not taking you to gym practice right now?"

Rodney hmmmphs. "Not even you're that duplicitous, luring me in with the promise of food and switching out for _exercise_ ," he says dismissively.

John reaches out and squeezes the back of Rodney's neck. "Good food, I promise," he says, and turns his attention back to the road.

They've never been to the [Lincoln Café](http://www.foodisimportant.com/) before, despite living not more than half an hour away. John likes it immediately – likes the low, snug booths and the bare brick walls, the specials on the chalkboard, the eclectic mix of Iowans dining inside. Their waitress – Cindy – opens the wine John brought with the casual ease of someone who knows what she's doing, tells them about the specials, and when Rodney's eyes start to glaze over dreamily somewhere around the black-pepper roasted peaches, trumpet mushrooms, and hazelnut salad that comes with the pork, John knows he's scored.

"What _is_ this place?" Rodney asks in awe when the waitress leaves them to think about their choices.

"Secret," John says with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"No really – this is . . . this is nowhere, this is dead central, nothing going on, this is – "

"This is really good food," John grins, sipping his wine.

"Yeah," Rodney grins, and orders the pork the minute Cindy wanders within five feet of their booth.

The food is divine – Jim and Laura had told him as much, but John likes finding out for himself just how good the elk is, Rodney's diatribe about animals with horns ("Antlers, Rodney") notwithstanding. Dessert presents Rodney with a bewildering set of choices, but when he settles on chocolate mousse with a fine web of fresh ginger at its base, John thinks perhaps it'll be a miracle if he makes it out of the restaurant with his own dignity intact, tugs his shirt out of his jeans before the mousse arrives and the moaning begins. Sure enough, Rodney's eyes roll back in ecstasy the moment he finds chocolate and ginger on his tongue, and John eats his ricotta and black pepper crème brûlée with the nails of one hand pressed viciously into his palm.

John pays the bill – "I asked you out, remember?" – and Rodney promises Cindy they'll be back all the time, babbles about the vanilla fingerlings until John actively drags him out the door. He doesn't stop dragging him once they hit the street – keeps pulling him none-too gently until they reach the truck, until he's crowding Rodney against the passenger-side door, framing his face with both hands and kissing him as if it's vital, necessary, a more basic need than food.

"Wow," Rodney mumbles when they finally break apart, clutching at each other's shirts and breathing hard. "I never knew you had a thing for potatoes."

And John laughs, buries his face in Rodney's shoulder and laughs, feels Rodney laugh with him, a gentle, fond rumbling beneath his hands. "Come on," he says at last. "I really need to get out of these pants."

And Rodney snorts anew, kisses him messily, derails their attempts to get back in the truck by another five minutes or so, and bursts into laughter more than once on the way home.

It's the best kind of sound John's ever heard.

******

They have sex again that night – slow and careful, hoarding every drag of fingertips, every flutter of a pulse, every kiss and steepled knee, every broken hitch in breathing. When John pushes inside Rodney, feels his body grip him tight, he's so stunned by the pleasure of it, by the trusting relief on Rodney's face, that he bows his head, holds himself steady, fingers spread wide against their rumpled, damp sheets, and doesn't move at all until he's sure his heart has plans to keep going. Then he shoulders Rodney's knees, slides deeper still, trembles along the shifting edge of Rodney's low moan, and only then – only then can he search for a rhythm to blur these sights and scents and sounds into nothing, into everything, into something that leaves him sprawled in a tangled mess over Rodney's body, Rodney's fingers carding affectionately through his hair.

"I love you," Rodney whispers.

John turns his head a fraction, kisses Rodney's chest. "Love you too," he breathes, and falls asleep to the gentle hum of Rodney's in-and-out, steadfast breathing.

*****

They pick up Finn together next evening, so relaxed in one another's company that Finn eyes them both suspiciously for a moment or two and asks, "did you do somethings naughty 'gain?" And though his three-year-old brain isn't running to the places theirs more naturally do, Rodney gets a coughing fit while John just grins. "Something like that," he says, throwing Finn over his shoulder, hauling him off to the car with a cheerful wave at Laura and Brad while Finn screams happily and Rodney tries to rearrange his lungs.

The phone starts to ring thirty seconds after they get home. "Sheppard," John says, picking up, throwing his keys aside and toeing off his boots.

"Major," says a familiar voice on the other end of the line. "Colonel Caldwell, USAF."

John rolls his eyes and smacks his forehead against the wall, wondering if the bastards know to call exactly when they can cause the best kind of disruption. "Sir?"

"We've reviewed your suggestions, Sheppard," Caldwell drawls. There's a long silence, and Caldwell huffs dismissively when John waits him out. "It's the considered opinion of the IOC that we accede to your recommendations, arrange a one-week visit for yourself to the base in question, every six months."

John blinks. "Well. Hey. Awesome."

"Paperwork will be forthcoming by courier, but I thought it best to notify you of our decision as soon as possible."

"Right. So. Six months, huh?"

There's a short snort of laughter on the other end of the line. "Five, Major. It's more than a month since you were here, but we're willing to be a little generous with the clock."

John flips Caldwell the bird as Rodney walks back into the kitchen, waves his hand and mouths _no, not you_ at Rodney's baffled look of dismay. "Well, thank you, sir." John screws up his face.

"You're welcome. The couriered papers will be with you within two days. Goodnight, Major." And there's a click as the call's disconnected.

"What?" Rodney asks. "What, what?"

John replaces the receiver. "Do they put all the SGC brass through asshole school before they get their job?" he asks.

"That was the SGC?"

"Yep."

Rodney waves both hands in tiny, rapid circles. "Caldwell?"

"Yep."

"And what?"

"They'll take what I offered. Six months. One week."

Rodney's face lights up. "That's great! That's so great! That's . . . oh my god, that's what you offered them and that's what they're taking and, god, what is _wrong_ with them? Why didn't they even negotiate?"

"I don't know," John says, not caring all that much. "You could always ask Sam?"

Rodney snaps his fingers. "Sam, excellent, yes. She'll know." He grimaces slightly. "It's possible she won't be able to tell me but still, perhaps we can . . . communicate in binary or a code of some kind. Ohhh, I've been working on a prototype virus that would . . ."

John opens the fridge and pulls out two beers. "They're sending everything by courier. I'll have to go five months from now."

"Five months?"

"They're starting the clock already."

Rodney looks around, at their untidy kitchen, at the unopened mail and the surrogacy brochures, at their spare change and keys. "Well – well then we need to get moving."

"On what?" John asks, popping the caps from both beers and passing Rodney one.

"On the surrogacy," Rodney says. "Five months? And six after that? We need to work this so that you're not – " He takes a swig of beer " – I mean, it'd be just our luck that you're scheduled to be in another _galaxy_ when our kid is born."

John pulls at his beer and absolutely does not panic. Then he takes another pull and tries again. "Okay."

"Okay."

"So what does that mean exactly?"

"It means forms. It means I call the clinic tomorrow and you and your boys go visit the nurses with the rubber gloves."

John squints at him. "Gotta tell you, buddy, not exactly the way to make me . . ." He gestures toward his crotch.

"Sorry, sorry, I . . . I'm just excited," Rodney says, grinning like a loon. "We have a deadline! We have things and stuff and, you know! Things!"

John feels himself smiling. "You're crazy," he says.

"I know!" Rodney crows. "It's fantastic!" And he chinks his beer bottle against John's, yells for Finn to turn off the TV for the love of god, and starts pulling application forms out of the pile of surrogacy materials. John keeps right on not panicking. He has a feeling it could become a full-time job.

*****

Things move fast. The clinic at the hospital has a cancellation a week from Wednesday, and the ink's barely dry on the couriered materials from the SGC – duly signed and shipped right back – before John finds himself in a bland, inoffensive waiting room, letting Rodney fill out his information on an endless medical questionnaire while he concentrates on jiggling his leg and watching the second hand click rhythmically around the reception area's clock.

"You can stop that anyyyyytime you want," Rodney says softly.

"Stop what?"

Rodney reaches out and stills John's bouncing knee. "The twitching."

"Oh." John stretches out his legs, rubs one foot against the other to pretty much the rhythm he had going moments before. "Sorry."

"What are you so wound up about?" Rodney asks, filling in their insurance information.

"Oh, I don't know," John says blandly. "The part where I have to . . . you know. _Here_."

"Performance anxiety?" Rodney asks. "And remind me, you were . . . eleven? When you had measles?"

"Twelve." John stuffs his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. "God, how long are they going to keep us waiting?"

Rodney elbows him. "It's been six minutes."

" _Sixty_ more like."

"Hey." Rodney hooks his pen over the top of the clipboard. "Hey." He waits for John to look at him. "It's okay. I promise. All of it, it's going to be okay."

John pulls a face and starts chewing on his lip.

It's another ten minutes before a sweet-faced physician's assistant calls John's name, leads him to an examination room that's just as bland and impersonal as the waiting area, takes his blood pressure and his temperature, catalogs his weight. She's brisk and professional and John's all too aware that his ears are burning bright pink the entire time. He tries not to meet her eyes, or look at his own crotch, and he's so high-strung he twitches every time she touches him.

"So . . ." She finishes making notes on his chart. "A basic count and motility assessment today?"

John briefly considers giving up on a second child, then realizes he'd have to make it out past Rodney in the waiting room if he ran. He's fairly sure Rodney has a good knee-level tackle in him. "Yeah," he grits out.

"Excellent." She crosses the room to a low, nondescript cupboard, pulls out a plastic cup with screw-top lid and a pile of porn magazines. "Take as much time as you need. When you're done, you can just press the green button there – " she gestures to a display on the wall " – and someone will be in to pick it up, okay?" She gives him a cheery smile, and John grimaces in return as she leaves the room, closing the door with a smart, sharp click.

For a while he just stares at the cup, rubbing his hands on his thighs. He's never felt less turned-on in his life, trapped in a tiny 10ft by 8ft room, industrial blue carpet beneath his boots and the blood pressure cuff still swinging slightly from where the PA hung it on the wall. Swallowing, he reminds himself he's seen action in more war zones than he cares to recall, and if he can face down the Taliban, he can surely jerk off into a cup. He gets up, crosses the room, picks up a copy of Playboy and flicks through the pages. It's all so bland and staged and _female_ , and while there was a time in his life when he liked every one of those things (save maybe the staged) he's a different guy now, and his dick's showing no signs of perking up for Miss January, or whatever the hell the name of the woman is on page 34.

He paces for a little while, tries a couple more magazines, eyes the door and wonders if there's an alarm that'll tell the PA if he opens it the barest crack. But this is a hopeless situation, and he'd rather explain what's going on than not perform at all, so he opens the door, sneaks down the hall, hisses "Rodney. _Rodney_ ," and gestures wildly when Rodney looks up.

"What?" Rodney asks, hurrying over with their coats in his arms. "What? What happened?"

"Nothing, that's the problem," John says, grabbing him by the wrist and hauling him back toward exam room seven. He pulls him inside and closes the door. "Girl porn," he says, gesturing to the pile on the counter.

"Oh." Rodney sets their coats on the chair and picks up a magazine, squints with a clinical eye at some of the poses inside. "Huh. Not working for you, huh?"

" _No_ ," John says. "Not at all."

"Well, maybe they have gay porn here somewhere," Rodney suggests.

"I'm not asking them for different porn!" John hisses, cheeks heating up.

"They must have to deal with this all the time – you can't be the first guy who needed that kind of help!"

"No," John says, shoving his hands in his jean pockets and pacing back and forth. "Just no. Look." He rolls his shoulders, trying to release some of the tension building there. "Couldn't you – what if you stood outside the door and . . . talked dirty or something?"

Rodney looks at him as if he's insane. "Right. Because I'm sure the nursing staff won't have a problem with me talking about your cock _right there in the hallway_."

John grimaces. "Fair point."

"You think?"

"Well . . . well, maybe you could – I don't know. Talk dirty to me here and then . . . then leave me to it. Or! Hey – what if you called me from your cell phone and –"

"From the waiting area?"

John winces. "Okay, bad call."

Rodney sighs and crosses the room, reaches up and hooks a hand behind John's neck. "Come here," he says gently, and pulls him into a kiss. It's soft, familiar – begins to coax John down from the heights of panic he's scaling. "Look, just . . ." Rodney grabs the plastic cup, leans back against the wall, tugs and pulls at John until his back's to Rodney's chest. Rodney noses at John's neck. "Forget where we are," he whispers, and cups John through his jeans.

It's Pavlovian, John thinks a little hysterically, the way his cock twitches at Rodney's command. "I don't know that that's possible," he manages.

"Mmmmmm." Rodney's sucking a wet, messy kiss to the curve of John's neck. "Bet it is." His fingers are kneading now, a glancing, teasing pressure, and John wants more than that, more.

He swallows. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Especially if you close your eyes."

John obeys, leans back, lets Rodney take more of his weight.

"Close your eyes and think of me going down on you."

John's breath hitches and he flushes at how easy Rodney makes this – makes _him_. "I like that," he mumbles, turning his head to hide his stained cheeks. Rodney just uses it as an opportunity to lick a path up the side of his neck.

"I can tell," Rodney says, squeezing him more firmly, making John's hips buck. His fingers fumble with the buttons at John's fly. "Need a little more room here, I think."

And John grits his teeth, tries not to rock into Rodney's touch, but it's a losing battle with Rodney's breath warm and unsteady on his neck, his hands working quickly, pulling his cock free.

"Better," Rodney whispers, and lifts his hand. "Lick." And John opens his eyes enough to see what he's doing, wets Rodney's hand with broad swipes of his tongue, swallows hard when Rodney says, "that's enough," and wraps those long, blunt fingers around his dick.

John whimpers, and covers his own mouth – he's pretty sure this is the kind of place where the coming's supposed to be perfunctory and clinical, no noise at all.

"It's okay," Rodney murmurs, jacking him slowly. "I'd like it if they heard you. If they knew."

John's eyes blow wide, and he shivers hard. "You – you would?"

"Yeah." Rodney noses at his neck, just below his ear. "That you can't help yourself when I'm doing this." He twists his hand, rubs his thumb just below the head of John's cock. "And you can't, can you? Help yourself?"

John shakes his head, breathing hard.

"Didn't think so," Rodney says, and sucks John's earlobe into his mouth, nips at it and makes John whine. "You should watch," he says, low. "Look at your cock, John. Go on. Look."

And John swallows, looks down, sees the dark line of hair creeping from beneath his rucked up t-shirt, the flush of his cock, hard and damp, slick with pre-come, sliding between Rodney's fingers. "God," he manages, strangled. Rodney's hand's so competent, so big and male and moving at exactly the right speed to haul him toward an orgasm he didn't think possible five minutes before. His hips twitch, and he groans as the head of his cock slides back into the tight fist of Rodney's hand.

"You feel like you're close," Rodney murmurs, hand moving quickly. "Are you close? You want to come?"

"Jesus," John grits out. "Yes. _Yes_ , god . . ."

And it happens so quickly, the way Rodney bites down at the juncture of his shoulder and neck; the way John tips his head back, hips straining forward; the way his orgasm rips up from dark, messy places inside. Everything's confused for a while, sensation snagging on sensation, and when John comes back to himself, Rodney's holding him up, nosing at his hairline, whispering, "it's okay, it's okay, I have you," into his ear.

"Did you – " John wets his bottom lip clumsily. "Get it?"

"Yeah," Rodney says fondly. He kisses John's shoulder, and John can feel his smile. "All done."

And John closes his eyes with relief, hopes they haven't just programmed a new kink into his repertoire, straightens up with difficulty and thinks about getting his worldly goods back into his pants.

*****

The problem with life is that no matter how many new things there are to juggle, the old stuff doesn't just go away. They might be up to their ears in surrogacy appointments and legal meetings, being vetted, checked, and their financial health evaluated; might be drawing up lists of possible surrogates and arguing over the relative importance of IQ in determining the mother of their child; might be crowing over their sperm count (John – 21 million per mm; 67% mobility) and threatening to go to Colorado and never return if someone doesn't shut _up_ about his sperm count – but they're also still parents, running errands, paying bills. They're still working and pulling all-nighters at the lab; still trying to figure out if the Williams' barn is salvageable or needs to be leveled and rebuilt again; still responsible for the mechanical health of a Piper-J aircraft that goes up for the first time that year in May; still feeding chickens and planting gardens; still explaining concepts like 'why the sky is blue' to their son. And they're still, once a week, going on a date – a concept that becomes all the more fraught once Finn works out, in his three-year-old fashion, that a date equals fun things and insists he wants one too.

"We go to the library every week!" Rodney protests.

"That's what we _do_ ," Finn says, shaking his head. "S'not a date."

"Swimming?" John puts in. "Swimming lessons are pretty fun."

"Tha's hard work," Finn says defiantly. "S'not a date!"

John valiantly keeps a straight face. "Okay. So – what would a date look like?"

"Foods," Finn says adamantly. "Foods and movies and go-karts."

"Go-karts," John says, nodding sagely. "Okay."

"Golfs."

Rodney throws a look in John's direction.

"Hey, hey!" John protests, holding up both hands. "This is all news to me! He's not my plant, swear to god."

"Hmmph," Rodney says. "Playground?" he suggests to Finn.

"Playground is orrrr'nary," Finn says, rolling his eyes. "Dates are special."

John nods slowly. "Okay. So – you're all right with me and Daddy having dates if you get a date too?"

Finn nods. "Yes."

"I think we can handle that," he says. "You want us to pick the first date, or . . ."

"Mini-golfs and ice cream, please!" Finn says, pumping his fists in the air.

Rodney looks at John balefully. "I think we just got played."

"Wouldn't be the first time," John shrugs.

Mini-golf with Finn proves to be an exercise in sharp reflexes and ducking out of the way of a wildly swinging club. Twice, he almost cracks Rodney across the skull, and by the time they've made it through all nine holes, Rodney's mumbling things about getting a prescription for Xanax – mostly John thinks, because his score's dead last.

"It's a ridiculous concept," Rodney says as they pile back into the car, headed for Coldstone Creamery. "The windmill was _clearly_ spinning irregularly, and my club was substandard, any fool could see as much."

"Sillllllllver medal!" Finn sings from the back seat. "I gots a silllllver medal!"

Rodney squints at John. "Who introduced the concept of medals here?"

"Me," John says with an unapologetic grin. "I got gold, you see."

Rodney smacks him on the thigh.

"Hey," John grins. "You placed! You got bronze!"

"Sillllllver medal!" Finn keeps on singing. "SILLLLVER MEDAL!"

Rodney has his revenge the Saturday they hit the go-karts – a lifetime of lab work has somehow hidden a secret, stealth, ninja-like talent for ramming other drivers (John) into the hay bales around the course and taking corners at a breakneck speed. "Winner!" Rodney crows as they buy hot dogs from the stand in the parking lot. "I am _totally_ the winner!"

"Yeah, yeah," John concedes, rolling his eyes. "Shame we don't have any champagne for you to douse the press."

Rodney grins. "I could douse you in Coke?" he suggests.

"I've always been a Fanta kinda guy," John shoots back easily.

"ROOT BEER," Finn puts in, and Rodney's forced to grab him by the ankles to swing him perilously while he shrieks for joy.

Summer creeps toward them – the end of the semester prompting John and Finn to fill the kitchen with balloons and throw a 'no more morons!' party for Rodney, who doesn't have to lecture undergraduates for another eight months. The first lettuce starts to sprout in the garden, and Finn gets his own plot of land to grow – and dig up – as many varieties of vegetables, worms, beetles, and roly-polys as he'd like. Everyone starts sleeping with the windows open, the cool night air smelling sweet with the promise of the ditch lilies to come, and Laura starts to show, much to Finn's great surprise.

"Think it must hurt," he tells John one afternoon, over a row of radish seeds.

"Nah," John says amiably. "It's okay. She's . . . stretchy."

Finn wrinkles his nose. "I'm glad _I_ dun hafta stretch."

John laughs. "I'm glad too, Jumper," and he lifts Finn's t-shirt, blows a raspberry on his dirty belly, laughs harder when Finn tips him over and returns the gift.

They meet their first potential surrogate in June, a mother of four who lives in Cedar Rapids; who likes crossword puzzles and Johnny Cash; who graduated _cum laude_ from the University of Chicago; who admits to having voted for Reagan in 1984 and therefore gets booted off the list quicker than Rodney can splutter invective about a defense budget devoted to fantasy and the Commander in Chief of la-la land. The second candidate's unmarried, a librarian, goes rock-climbing on weekends, and is pretty much a perfect fit until they find out she's never eaten a square of chocolate in her life. So it goes – a list of qualified candidates, each smart and generous in her own way, but lacking something that satisfies them both, that makes them want her genes mixed up with their own.

Which leaves Sunshine McKenzie, 28, single, never-married, a grad student in performance at the U – a veteran of surrogacy, having borne one child before.

"Sunshine," Rodney moans. "God. I can smell the simmering lentils from here."

"Come on," John chides. "It's not like _she_ picked her name."

"Oh no?" Rodney asks. "You don't think 'Sunshine' smacks of the kind of person who bought a change-of-name form on the internet and filed it with the local clerk of court? She was probably named Matilda or Stephanie at birth, gave it all up to commune with the heavens every time she signs a check."

"Matilda?" John asks.

"Whatever – my point is, I'm not sure I can endorse having our child carried for nine months by a strung-out hippy."

John pulls a face. "Hippies tend to be pretty not-strung-out," he says. "Comes with the job."

"Of course they're strung out!" Rodney protests. "Can you imagine trying to live in this world constantly searching for _peace_? How can that not be a terrifying, anxiety-producing way to live?"

"Well." John scratches the back of his neck. "That's probably why they get high a lot."

Rodney wags a finger. "She is not getting high with our baby inside her."

"Well, no, of course not, but – " John closes his eyes for a second, pulls the conversation back on track. "How about we meet her? How bad can it be?"

"Bad."

"Worse than the woman who wanted to live on only spinach and kidney beans while she was pregnant?" John asks.

"Okay. So – not as bad as that," Rodney concedes.

Despite Rodney's prediction that they'd be able to spot Sunshine a mile away from her sequined skirts and the permanent cloud of patchouli oil that would hang about her, they're forced to rely on more conventional methods – the surrogacy agency's brochure lying on the table in the coffee shop, beside a latte cup as big as Rodney's head.

"Sunshine?" John asks of the dark-haired woman who's reading Carl Sagan while she waits.

She looks up, smiling. "Yes – you must be – "

"John. John Sheppard, and this is – "

Rodney plucks her book out of her hand. "You read _Sagan_?" he asks.

"In my spare time," she grins. "He relaxes me."

John's pretty sure that's when Rodney falls in love.

There is, of course, a perfectly reasonable explanation for Sunshine's name. "Hippie parents," she laughs (John likes that she laughs a lot). "Moved out to San Francisco in '68, changed their names to Moonbeam and Davos, had a kid, lived on a commune, the whole nine yards. I love 'em, but they're nutcases. Dropped a little too much acid in '71."

"Who didn't?" Rodney says, grinning broadly, and John does a double-take, has to kick him in the shins.

"So – why surrogacy?" he asks, feeling like they ought to cut to the chase before Rodney writes her into his will.

Sunshine's smile's a little wry. "I'll be honest. The money. The first baby paid most of my way through graduate school – another would pay for the rest. And I'm young and fit and find it easy to be pregnant – and I figure this way I'm doing something good for people too." She hitches a shoulder and blushes just a fraction. "The first couple were gay, as well."

Rodney's frowning, perplexed. "What do you mean, pay your way through graduate school?"

Sunshine throws him a kind, understanding look. "They don't actually pay art students to get through a Ph.D," she explains.

Rodney's horrified. "But – but – but you're a musician!"

"I know."

"They give money to the literature candidates – I know, I've seen the annual report. And those people just . . ."

"Hey," John puts in. "Ronon gets some of that money, remember."

"Yes, and he's very talented, but, but – _literature_ students. And you play the piano!" he says, as if this should explain everything and set the world to rights.

Sunshine pats his hand. "It's okay. If they'd paid me, I wouldn't be here, would I?"

"Oh." Rodney quiets at that, except to mutter, "English lit majors, I ask you," and no doubt commit a little mental voodoo on his brother-in-law.

They talk business after a while – insurance, expectations, what happens after the birth. There are a thousand contingencies to consider, enough to make John's head ache. But he likes her, this sassy pianist with an interest in science, a love for baseball and a sharp, sarcastic wit. He maybe wishes she didn't support the Colts, but he can live with a little disappointment, and she has plans to leave the state after graduation, which reassures him more than he thinks it ought.

But it isn't her warm smile or good heart or obvious smarts that make up his mind – isn't until they're in the truck driving home that he says what he's thinking out loud. "Her hair," he blurts. "It's like my mom's. Curly."

And Rodney pats his knee and leaves his hand there for the rest of the drive.

*****

Their lawyer draws up an impressive contract for everyone to sign. John reads through it for the third time on a Sunday afternoon in mid-June, sipping from a cup of coffee in a pleasant wash of afternoon sun. Finn's climbing his trees – his latest, favorite pastime – within yelling distance if he tries to go too high, and Rodney's humming in the kitchen, hell bent on conquering the mysteries of making meatloaf. (John hopes it'll be edible. The lasagna of February past still weighs heavy on his soul.)

It's a little overwhelming to consider all the things involved with pregnancy when you're not some guy or girl with an opposite number and a whim. It feels invasive to some degree, to be prescribing what Sunshine can and cannot do for the next few months, and even though she's a good sport and gung-ho about the whole thing, John wishes there were some way to go about this that didn't sit so heavily on his shoulders. Maybe they're ridiculous – _he's_ ridiculous – to be so wedded to the idea of a kid with his own dark hair. It's not as if there aren't children needing homes right, left and center; not as if they wouldn't love any kid they called their own. And yet there's some niggling, deep-buried, inexplicable need in him to try this first, to leave a little piece of himself in the world the way Rodney's leaving Finn. He rubs his face and picks up his cup of cooling coffee. So much to think about, while all around him, a hundred nameless couples just go at it and fuck.

"You signed yet?" Rodney asks, coming out to the porch, wiping his hands on a dishtowel.

"About to," John says, smoothing the paper over his knee. He reaches for the ballpoint pen he wedged on the windowsill when he came outside.

Rodney sits down in the other chair. "I woke up last night – dreamed there were lawyers at the delivery."

"How many?" John asks, scrawling his name.

"Fourteen. They were taking notes."

John shudders. "They probably would." He scrawls his name again.

"They made me sign twelve sheets of paper before I could pick up our kid."

"Girl or boy?" John asks.

"Never got to see. Woke up on page seven."

John scrawls his name one last time and sets the contract aside. "Are we completely out of our minds?"

"Yeah," Rodney replies, reaches for John's hand. "Pretty much."

John sips from his coffee. "Just so long as we know that up front."

John makes two deposits at the sperm bank before the month's out, both donated with a little help from Rodney's hand, both turned over to the powers that be to be washed and catalogued ready for use. "Washed," Rodney says as they walk back to the car.

"Tiny, tiny tumble dryers, do you reckon?" John asks.

"Better than scrubbing boards," Rodney suggests.

They get the call on July 8th – "Ovulation day!" as Rodney says a little hysterically when he tumbles out of his car at 10.37am "I had to come home," he says, waving his hand, laptop case still clasped between his fingers. "I didn't know what else to do," he explains, and John understands, hugs him clumsily, helps him carry his backpack inside and makes a pot of coffee so he has something to do with his hands. They're utterly useless – pace aimlessly; watch TV then turn it off; read and then put the journal or magazine back down. It's almost noon when Rodney catches John by the elbow. "Let's go to bed," he says urgently, gaze flickering between John's eyes and his mouth.

"What – now?" John asks.

"I figure _someone_ should be having sex when the baby's conceived," Rodney explains, looking flustered, and John feels the tension in his gut break into smaller pieces, follows him upstairs and devotes himself to the art of making Rodney laugh and shout and come with a hoarse groan for the better part of the afternoon.

The insemination doesn't work – they hear about it ten days later, and while they've been reciting the statistics, success rates and failures, it still comes as a blow that they're not part of the lucky few to succeed right out of the gate. It makes them cranky and uncommunicative, makes them stake out a portion of the house for themselves, Rodney heading to his office when he comes home for the night while John pretends he has business in the basement that just can't wait. They snipe and bicker and find there are fights waiting amid the Cheerios and the bath towels, beside the garage door opener and a stray can of baked beans. John misses Rodney like crazy, can't _stand_ him, thinks he might go nuts if they can't find a kind word to say to each other soon, blames himself, hates Rodney for blaming him, whether or not he does. Everything's prickles and stings and barbs, and even flying doesn't soothe John's temper, even lab work can't make Rodney calm.

Détente comes in the shape of tangled fingers between them in bed – a first touch, then another, and apologies that get kissed into each other's mouths. "Maybe I did it wrong," John whispers.

Rodney huffs and tsks sympathetically, touches John's ear. "I was right there."

"Maybe _we_ did it wrong."

"We've been doing that, separately and alone, for most of our lives. I'm pretty sure we're experts at jerking off."

"Maybe they're not good swimmers."

"67% motility, remember?"

John sighs to remember how he'd crowed. "I'm sorry."

"You can be sorry for being a jerk, but you better not be apologizing for your sperm."

John laughs softly – it seems ridiculous once Rodney says it out loud. "And you were a prick."

"Yep. First class. I've been practicing for years, you know."

John kisses him. "We're really bad at this."

Rodney touches his nose to John's own. "Yeah," he whispers, and squeezes John's hand.

Come Saturday, Rodney turns his energies to their cluttered garage, and John feels his restlessness dying as he trims the grass, as the sun warms the back of his neck and coaxes early bramble roses into bloom. Finn's climbing his favorite tree again, nimble as a monkey, oblivious to his parents' discomfort or doing a damn fine job of ignoring it – John's not sure which. It's only one insemination attempt, John reminds himself when thoughts of surrogacy push insistently into his mind. Just one – one time, and there's money enough for four, and if it doesn't work out, they'll look into other things, and if that doesn't work, they've Finn, the kind of blessing who could rip your heart in two, he's such a lot of kid to love. So it'll all be fine, John figures, silencing the lawnmower's roar, stretching out the kinks in his back and deciding it's time to go bother Rodney. Can't let too much time go by without mocking his peg boards and organizational plastic bins – it's a moral imperative.

Which is when Finn falls – a blur in John's vision, a tumbling heartbreak of limbs, blue shorts, red shirt. He hits the ground before John's head's can fully snap around, and the sickening thud he makes is nothing compared to the childish scream that comes next, a sound fit to freeze John where he stands, panicked, immobile, all action culled by fear, the paralysis only dissipating when he sees Rodney running into view.

"Finn – _Finn_ . . . It's okay, it's okay, Daddy's here," Rodney's yelling, sliding to a halt on his knees at Finn's side. "Jesus, I know, I know," he murmurs in between Finn's hiccupping cries. "Your arm, I can see it, it's okay, it's okay." He looks up at John, pale and terrified. "Stay here with him, I'll get the car." And John doesn't remember moving, but he's suddenly kneeling in the grass, dirt grinding messily into his jeans.

"Baaa-ffaaaa," Finn wails, clutching his arm – it's clearly broken, and John swallows down the nausea he feels, brushes a somehow-steady hand over Finn's hair.

"It's okay," John murmurs, trying to project calm. "Daddy's getting the car, we're going to get it fixed, okay?" He doesn't remember the last time he saw these kind of tears – fat and limitless, pouring down Finn's face; he wants to pull him into his arms but he's scared of hurting him more – settles for a broad hand on one of Finn's legs, settles for projecting nothing but reassurance onto his face. "It's okay, Jumper. It's okay, you can cry."

Rodney reverses up to where they're huddled, catapults out of the car, yanks open the back door and pulls out a blanket they've used for picnics and covering Finn on late night drives. "If you can hold him, I'll drive," Rodney says, shaking with urgency, the blanket in his hand.

"Yeah," John says, shifting to slide his hands under Finn's body, wincing when Finn shrieks again when the movement jars his arm. "It's okay, buddy. You're gonna be okay, I promise." He gathers him close, cradles him like he hasn't since he was a baby, slides into the back seat and lets Rodney shake the blanket out over them both. "Drive," John says, pulling the door closed, and Rodney's in the front seat a second later, pulling on his seat belt and trying to get out of park at the same time. Finn's whimpering and coughing and his face is covered in snot, and John's never felt so helpless before, so effortlessly out of his league.

They make it to Iowa City in an indecently short span of time going by the clock that blinks on the dashboard, but measured in Finn's unhappy sobs, it's a decade or more. They're admitted and calmed by staff John barely acknowledges, who give Finn a shot, take an x-ray, find a bed. They work to set his arm, make his cast dark blue. "It's his favorite color," Rodney tells them, and John can barely stand the desperation that's threaded through his voice.

They're left alone eventually, Finn fast asleep with the ER blankets tucked around his chin. John sits by the gurney, head in his hands – starts when he feels Rodney's touch at the back of his neck. "Hey," Rodney says. "Hey, I'm . . ."

John tugs him down into the other chair, reaches out, keeps him close. "No one told me this was part of having kids," he whispers. He swallows hard. "I've never been so fucking scared."

And Rodney nods and leans against him. "I think there are twenty or thirty people we should sue."

The idea shocks a laugh out of him. "All the parents we know?"

"And their parents. We could sue ours if they were alive."

John turns his head, kisses Rodney's hair. "Break any bones when you were a kid?"

"No. Just allergies."

"I busted my arm three times," John says, and Rodney lifts his head, stares at him, horrified.

"Your poor mother!" he whispers, aghast, and it's suddenly the funniest thing anyone's said all week, and John laughs and laughs until he all but cries.

*****

Finn, predictably, shakes off the after-effects of the accident much more quickly than his parents – is all but turning cartwheels within a week, getting the local kids to sign his cast with names (if they're old enough) or squiggles (he doesn't care which) if they're not. It's a badge of triumph in his eyes, the cast – he's a tough guy now, and John remembers his own first broken limb, how _cool_ he thought it made him once he forgot how much it hurt. Now, in comparison, he just feels weak – like there's something inside him that's still knitting together, much more slowly than Finn's fragile bones.

August 4 is another Ovulation Day – takes them by surprise with everything else that's been happening, and if they take the day off, have sex in their wide, sun-filled bedroom, it's different from last time, from the laughter and giddy shouts. This time it's slow, so intimate John can barely breathe, and afterward he sleeps with his face pressed to Rodney's broad back, dreams of his mother and a bright Iowa sun, wakes to soft kisses against his temple, against his left hand, against his neck, and drowses in Rodney's arms content to do and say very little at all.

The call comes, ten days later. John's dropped Finn off at daycare and is more than half the distance to Mr. Brenneman's when he answers and gets the news. He pulls a U-turn in the middle of the road, waves to David Hamilton when the latter honks his horn and yells vague insults for making him slow down, floors his truck and shoots toward Iowa City – doesn't think things through overmuch, just knows he has to see Rodney right now.

He passes the farm, passes Ada's house, crosses the river and turns right along the Morse road. It's hot and dusty beyond his truck – with the windows wound down he can taste the dirt that's blowing up from the soy bean fields, smell the heat that isn't close to peaking for the day – and he wishes the radio were working, something to distract him as he coaxes the Dodge to give him just a little more.

He's almost to Morse itself when he sees it, a red car barreling down the incline on the other side of town. John pulls over, slows to a messy halt, gets out of the truck and paces beside it, too much energy in his limbs and his mind to think of standing still as the whine of the other car draws closer. He sees Rodney's head snap around when the car zips past, hears the screech of brakes applied with non-scientific force, starts laughing when Rodney reverses back down the road and narrowly avoids settling the back end of his car in a ditch.

"A BABY," Rodney yells when he flings himself out of the car. "We're having another baby!"

And John grabs hold of him with a strength he didn't know he had, squeezes him close, and can't find it in him to say a blessed word.

  



End file.
